[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 105 (Wednesday, June 16, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4559-S4560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Juneteenth

  Mr. President, this Saturday is Juneteenth, the oldest nationally 
celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery in America. Our Founders 
were brilliant and brave about many, many things, but they lacked the 
wisdom, perhaps the courage, maybe even the resolve, to face a 
poisonous contradiction at the heart of our new Nation. How could this 
Nation, founded on the belief that all people are created equal, 
condone and allow human slavery? Many of our Founding Fathers owned 
slaves themselves.
  Eighty-five years after our founding, that unresolved contradiction 
plunged America into civil war. Halfway through that war, President 
Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all 
persons held in bondage in rebellious States ``are, and henceforth 
shall be free.''
  His action meant little to most enslaved people in America. Most of 
those held in bondage didn't gain freedom for another 2 years after the 
Civil War ended. For the 250,000 men, women, and children enslaved in 
the State of Texas, the wait was even longer. They learned of their 
freedom on June 19, 1865, 2 months after the Civil War ended, when Army 
MG Gordon Granger and 2,000 Union troops marched into Galveston, TX, 
with orders to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.
  One year later, African Americans in Galveston held America's first 
Juneteenth celebration to commemorate that moment when they knew of the 
end of slavery in America. Formerly enslaved people wore their finest 
clothes, read the Emancipation Proclamation, and prayed together.

[[Page S4560]]

  Later, as African Americans in Galveston and other parts of the South 
joined the great migration north, they carried that Juneteenth memory 
with them, giving the celebration new roots in Chicago, Los Angeles, 
and scores of other cities.
  Today, Juneteenth is celebrated as a State holiday or day of 
observance in 47 States, including my State of Illinois and in the 
District of Columbia.
  Yesterday, this Senate approved unanimously the resolution honoring 
Juneteenth as a national day of reflection and celebration. In this 
moment in time in our divided Nation, that unanimous recognition of the 
importance of Juneteenth is a balm to our national soul.